Salvation Army, Red Cross, Susan G. Komen abandon Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

A worker walks along a road at the Mar-a-Lago club in West Balm, Fla. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The Salvation Army, the American Red Cross and Susan G. Komen on Friday joined a growing exodus of organizations canceling plans to hold fundraising events at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, deepening the financial impact to President Trump’s private business amid furor over his comments on Charlottesville.

The major exits now mean seven of the club’s biggest event customers have abandoned it in a matter of hours, likely costing the Trump business hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue or more.

The Red Cross said it would cancel its annual fundraiser at the club because “it has increasingly become a source of controversy and pain for many of our volunteers, employees and supporters,” the charity said in a statement Friday.

Susan G. Komen, the nation’s largest breast-cancer fundraising group, said Friday it would seek another venue after hosting its “Perfect Pink Party” gala at Mar-a-Lago every year since 2011.

And the Salvation Army, which has held a gala at the club every year since 2014, said in a statement that it would not hold its event there “because the conversation has shifted away” from its mission of helping those in need.

The Autism Project of Palm Beach County also said Friday that it is no longer planning on hosting an event at the club, president Richard Busto told The Post Friday. The group has held “Renaissance Dinner” galas at the club every year since at least 2008.

The charitable groups joined three other large event cancellations Thursday: the Cleveland Clinic, the American Friends of Magen David Adom and the American Cancer Society, which cited its “values and commitment to diversity” in its decision to abandon the club.

Another group, the Unicorn Children’s Foundation, said it is “currently exploring other options” for a previously planned luncheon at Mar-a-Lago and would make its final decision next month.

The cancellations hit at one of the private Florida club’s top moneymakers: The club earned between $100,000 and $275,000 each from similar-sized events in the past during Palm Beach’s glitzy social seasons.

But they also reveal a widening vulnerability for Trump, who, unlike past presidents, refused to divest from his business interests when he joined the White House.

The groups’ cancellations follow rebukes from business executives this week, who heavily criticized Trump’s comments that white supremacists and counter-protesters were similarly at blame during a deadly weekend in Charlottesville.